US’ Alabama Just Made Women Property

It was my birthday today, so I didn’t have much time to write anything at all, despite it being such a big day historically in Israeli-Palestinian history. It would require too much depth to write something about that at this late hour, but there is an update on a previous piece that really cements the hypocrisy of many religious followers. That is the abortion laws that just passed in Alabama.

Congratulations, America, you just adopted some of the most restrictive and severe abortion laws in your nation’s history, in contradiction of your own Constitutional rights. Seems that document is only of concern when it stops you from owning something designed to kill, not when you are… concerned about a medical procedure you equate to killing, I don’t know, figure that one out.

In simple terms, the government just made women’s sexual and reproductive organs the property of the State. Even in cases of rape or incest, there is no exception to the laws. The sole reason it would be allowed is if the woman is at serious risk. Not that the trauma of sexual assault and/or such bizarre familial relations isn’t already something that puts them at high risk or anything.

There are two (for the purpose of this article, there are probably many more that one could discuss in detail elsewhere) hypocrisies that are, forgive the pun, born out of this. The first is that of religious influence in lawmaking. With no exceptions, outside the obvious right to hold and practice your faith, religion and the State should have absolutely no correlating powers. Your religious beliefs and values are not a viable metric of morality, nor should they continue to be centres of institutionalised oppression. Any Christian that supports this also has no right to be upset about “Sharia Law taking over” – how wrong you are.

That brings us to the second hypocrisy that is delivered by those of America’s unique version of libertarianism; there is also a bit of a crossover between them and the religious people, but by no means is that a plausible generalisation overall. Here it becomes bizarre, because these are the people who get quite angry about the government intervening in their affairs. Some points are valid, but on an extreme level some would prefer to die of a curable disease before they accept government-funded medical aid.

On the abortion discussion, and the same sex marriage discussion before it, they change their tune entirely. Instead of being outraged at this obvious overstep of government power, they applaud the iron grip on the rights of women – possibly because it does only affect women and not them. Intervention from above is allowed when it matches what they believe, but god forbid the government decide they shouldn’t control what people do with their own lives.

Plans to take it all the way to the Supreme Court will hopefully be successful.